Will Putin manage to destabilise Central Europe? The threat is more real than we think

5. 5. 2022 / Jan Čulík

čas čtení 22 minut
This is an excerpt from a talk that Jan Čulík gave to the Threat Defuser (https://threat-defuser.org/) seminar in Prague on 22nd April 2022. The project Threat Defuser deals with hybrid warfare and a plan to safeguard societies. It explores the role of "soft" information strategies propagated through mass and social media that constitute hybrid warfare.

Full English language transcript of this talk is  HERE.

 A Czech translation is HERE.




 

Andrei Rogatchevski, University of Tromso, Norway: This is doctor Čulík to my right. Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies at the University of Glasgow. Jan was my colleague and teacher for many years. So anyway, this is not his claim to fame. For many decades he's been running more or less single-handedly an internet resource called Britské listy, a Czech daily run from the United Kingdom. Commenting on this that and the other from a point of view that is difficult to define because opportunities for different points of views have been given to many different people. So it is quite a spectrum of opinions from the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Also, Jan has a slot now on Czech Regional Television where he interviews people for about 15 minutes to half an hour.

Jan Čulík: 15 minutes.

Everybody, thank you very much for inviting me. In the first place, yeah. Everybody seems to be saying the same thing these days. I mean, I heard Jakub Kalenský‘s lecture. Yes it is very important. This fake news thing. And before I start. The Guardian a couple of days ago had this kind of shocked message that pro Russian lies on Facebook received about 300,000 views each of them, and that nobody does anything about it. I'm here on this Erasmus exchange teaching at various Czech universities. In České Budějovice I've been doing a little course about fake news. And Jakub Kalenský was mentioning these Czech Elves, this group which is trying to fight against the trolls. Their spokesman Bob Kartous is actually a very close collaborator and co-journalist of Britské listy.

They do very good work and in this class on Tuesday, no, on Wednesday, I actually used some of their data. They have a website where they kind of map fake news, which is disseminated in the Czech Republic. The main problem is basically pensioners and chain mails. And the lack of critical assessment because they uncritically disseminate emotional mails and why am I talking about it? Before I start talking about my topic. OK, the Guardian is shocked that 300,000 people worldwide have watched fake news on Facebook. From these Czech Elves database, it shows that the Czech fake news, each item receives about 300,000 accesses. It is in this Czech Republic which has 10 million people, right? So it's absolutely horrendous.

I'm going to be talking about the Czech Republic primarily here since you're here in this country. Czech Republic has had a very good press since the fall of communism. Originally it was regarded as a model democracy. After the fall communism there was even arrogance. This original, allegedly right wing in fact rather Communist Prime Minister Václav Klaus said sometime in the 90s, „Don't put us together with those beggars from Eastern Europe.“ He is a very nice man, evidently.

I am foul-mouthing the Czech Republic again, but it's not as bad here as in Poland or Hungary. But there is a serious danger of destabilization, and I'm going to be talking about this. We were actually talking to Professors Petr Bílek and Vladimír Papoušek this week in České Budějovice and we were horrified, we all agreed how quickly everything has gone to hell. First the pandemic, now the war.

The Czech opinion polling agency STEM, on 19th April 2022 published an analysis of moods of the Czech public in relation to the Russian attack against Ukraine. And about the presence of Ukraine refugees in the Czech Republic.

I don't know how much you know about the fact that in 2015, when the refugee crisis blew up in Europe, Czech Republic became absolutely xenophobic. I mean the levels of hatred of refugees and immigrants, was absolutely incredible considering that almost no refugees from Syria came here. Islamophobia ruled supreme. According to opinion polls, basically 4%. of the Czechs were willing to accept refugees in this country, right? Now with the Ukrainian crisis, mercifully, it's been different. There has been this wave of help and sympathy. There are various views about this that this is because – well, they are white, in the first place, also, they're not Muslim, there is this irrational fear of Muslims in this country.

Before the pandemic, I started working on this article, I have not finished it. There is a very good Czech database of newspapers and I suppose also websites called Newton. It records things from the 1990s onwards and when I started doing this article, I still have to finish it, although with the pandemic it became slightly less topical now. I put in the search engine “kill Muslims”. For the period of the 1st of February to the 28th of February 2020, I found 5000 articles within this period which include this phrase. This was the atmosphere. With the Ukrainians it's not like that. There's a lot of help. You can go to railway stations. There are all these, all these volunteers and everything. I'm looking at this from the vantage point of Britain, where the public is also very much in favor of helping Ukrainians, although the government is absolutely fascist. They have not abolished visas for for refugees and it's very problematic.

But, I saw a Syrian medical doctor, originally a refugee in the UK, being interviewed on television, Channel 4 News. He came to Britain a few years ago and he said yes, just wait. Because at the beginning they would be all very friendly and it's like couple of months and you will start hearing “You are stealing our jobs.” I was talking about this to students in České Budějovice just last week and repeated this and they said “They are already saying it!” And also I don't know. I had a little talk about all this. I don't know whether South Bohemia is particularly kind of nasty. Somebody told me that it was originally kind of a communist bastion, was it? There was a lecturer in these classes from Soběslav, I think, and he said that local people there are absolutely against refugees. “There are too many Ukrainian flags here,“ they apparently say. “We want to show our Czech flags!” Anyway.

Public opinion poll done by STEM from the 19th of April, 2022, it seems to be very encouraging. Because it says that there are only 4 per cent of Czechs who have a positive attitude to Russia, to Putin. The Russian invasion to Ukraine brought an unprecedented feeling of being threatened. Only 9 per cent of the Czechs think that Central Europe is not threatened by conflict. Czech society now believes in NATO. 78% of the population agrees with the Czech Republic being in NATO, which is the highest share since 1994. Also, most Czechs think that the EU should be supporting Ukraine militarily by sending military equipment and find gas and oil elsewhere than in Russia. And even two months after the beginning of the attack in Ukraine, Czech society still on the whole shows high solidarity with Ukraine. Two thirds, 64% of the Czech public approve of the reception of Ukrainian refugees. But still it is only 64%. What about those other 36%, right? But why am I talking about it is? There are signals of destabilisation. Signals that the public is also afraid. Two thirds, 70% of the Czechs are now afraid that what the communists used to call “social certainties” will be eroded. That they will basically lose their jobs. And 52% of Czechs are convinced that the presence of the Ukrainian refugees will lead to higher unemployment.

Which is of course rubbish because we all know that usually refugees are incredibly active and if you look at what happened in Germany after accepting those millions of Syrians, t actually boosted the economy.

One other thing I wanted to mention. Czech Republic has a serious problem with the the bailiffs. In about 2000 and the Czech President Miloš Zeman was kind of connected to this and weirdly the Social Democratic Party is kind of involved in it. In around 2000 they introduced the law, making bailiffs private entrepreneurs of debt collecting from the public. What happened? You go on public transport. You do not pay the 20 crowns for your ticket. You are caught by an inspector. This is registered. Five years, nothing. Five years nothing happens. In five years you lose your house. Because this debt is passed on to private debt collectors, baliliffs, And they are free to put on absolutely exorbitant charges on this. There has been quite a discussion about this and some people are saying that this is what happened in 2000, up to about 2010, and now the situation where from a totally miniscule debt you will lose your home that does not happen so often. There are various other issues connected with this. We were once affected with this in Britské listy where I don't know there was a former collaborator and he had a mobile phone which we paid for and there was a debt of about 600 crowns or £20. About three years later, our account was blocked and they wanted 60,000 crowns for this. So we had to obviously pay this.

Apparently, now the situation is getting better. I don't know, I did an interview with Radek Hábl last night, a specialist who deals with these issues. And he actually says that the number of these debt collecting procedures has grown by 11 per cent over the past year. The Czech Republic has 10 million inhabitants. One and a half million people in this country are affected by this debt collecting slavery. And he was actually saying that quite a lot of people have multiple impositions of these bailiff procedures on them. What happens: These people’s bank accounts are blocked. They have to go into the black economy.

This destabilizes the political situation in this country. Affected people are mostly in poorer areas. Northern Bohemia, North Western Bohemia. There are regions which vote for the populists. There is a semi-Japanese immigrant here called Tomio Okamura and he runs this SPD party, which is, paradoxically, a blatantly unfair anti-refugee and populist party. They have about 10 per cent of popular support in this country.

One other thing that Mr. Hábl was saying, but of course, this is not only a problem. in the Czech Republic. Last week, the Daily Mirror ran an absolutely shocking headline on its front page. 23 per cent of Brits can't afford to heat their homes. 23 per cent. Incredible rise of energy prices. He was saying to me yesterday that I think 1 square meter of gas used to cost €25. Now it's €100, but of course it goes up to €250. Right? Now Czech energy companies so far have had supplies, they have stored gas, so this hasn't afflicted people yet, but it will in the autumn. Right, so there will be rises in the prices of energy. And everything. Of hundreds of percent. Now, this has already happened in Britain. In France, apparently, this hasn't happened because Macron has taxed the energy companies. And so it hasn't been. such a problem, there but here expect absolute destabilisation of society. He was also saying that there is a 13% inflation. Quite a lot of people became impoverished in this country due to covid. There was 9 per cent of people living in poverty here, now it is about 15 per cent. But the impact of the Russian invasion has not yet been registered because as he explained these bailiff procedures take about a year. You first need to get into debt, then about two years later it happens.

There is a new right-of-centre government in this country. People call it decent. It is led by a political scientist from Brno University, Petr Fiala.. This country is very small. Went to lunch with the head of my department in Brno. And he is actually, the friend of Mr. Fiala because he used to be the vice-chancellor there. And he's the head of the political studies department there and he was telling me that Mr Fiala is very nice. At one point he really fought for them for some grant. Something like that. However, he says. he's not very effective. I can see that I am kicking into your sand castle because you had for many years here this horrible Prime Minister, populist Andrej Babiš who is now becoming really quite populist and now you've got this nice decent person. And they're doing something to help these poor people.

There was an election in October. It was won by a coalition of five parties, most of which are right of center. There was this Pirate Party. It was regarded as mildly left of center. But there were so many attacks in the pre-election period that they only got four MPs in Parliament in that coalition. There is one interesting thing that there used to be a fairly strong Social Democratic Party here. They became really, if I may say openly, quite fascist, frankly.

They really decided that they wanted to be anti immigrant and anti-Muslim. There was this long fight whether the Czech Republic should accept refugee children from the Middle East, from Syria, and there was this fight, this Social Democratic Home secretary Hamáček was absolutely against. Hamáček said that they were going to be terrorists, these 9-year-olds and all that kind of stuff. It was like they were hoping that if they follow this populist line that this would be popular. But all their voters were stolen by Andrej Babiš and his ANO party. Which was in government and they had kind of mildly left-wing pretensions.

But in the elections here there is this 5% limit so the parties that don't get 5% they can't get into Parliament. The Social Democrats didn't get into Parliament in October. There is no left wing party in this Parliament. The other interesting thing is there is no party in the Czech Parliament which would represent young people. I suppose this is a problem in many countries. One other interesting point, Mr. Šlerka, argue with me if you will, the ruling political parties and the opposition are basically dominated by 50 to 60 year-olds -

Josef Šlerka: Yes.

Jan Čulík: - and they don't give a damn about global warming, right, because it doesn't concern them, they are going to be dead, right? There is absolutely no representation of young people whose problem this is going to be, and they don't know what to do.

But the main thing that that I'm talking about is that Mr Fiala is nice. But apparently is not terribly competent. There are members of this coalition who are kind of making these statements that poor people, that's their own fault, isn't it. There was this woman Pekarová who was saying “It is not the task of the Government to take care of people.” This was something that she said in Parliament.

They're doing something. Small things. But I seriously fear that what is coming is going to hit this country very hard. And what will happen? You are going to have Poland and Hungary or whatever. And Putin‘s aims will finally be realized here because he will destabilise Europe by bringing these prices so high. These people who will be incredibly impoverished will vote for the populists and it's quite interesting I don't think the current nice right-of-center government is realizing that unless they start behaving and unless they start really actually fighting for people.

This is going to be a problem and of course, the former.Czech Prime Minister, the oligarch Andrej Babiš, who is actually being sued for some fraudulent business activity, is now trying to be reelected President. He has now jumped absolutely on this kind of populist note and he's putting on Twitter things like, “Well, the government is working for the Ukrainian refugees. But why isn't it doing anything for us?” You know? So this is already starting and it will resonate amongst people. The sociologist Daniel Prokop here is saying the government must not tell people we all will have to tighten our belts.

I have mentioned that I've been doing this website for almost 30 years now. About this stereotyping. This is slightly old hat because the situation has changed. Nevertheless, I would say that the country is still suffering from it.

Personal experience: When I started editing Britské listy in the mid 1990s. I had lived in Britain for about 20 years and actually had had some experience with journalism. And I was very aware of the fact that democracy thrives if you have critical, hard hitting investigative journalism. And this was very difficult to put through in the context of the Czech Republic, because in the 1990s in particular, many Czechs were absolutely enamored of this newly created regime they saw as a glossy capitalism, and you were not supposed to criticize it. And if you criticized any moves by the government, you were a bloody communist. And because we criticized the government, we became victims of this stereotyping. “They are really bloody communists in Britské listy.” Then some of them were later surprised that we were not.

I think this still happens to this very day. I suppose it happens in other countries as well. You are putting out certain messages. And there are subliminal signals within them. Which for people are actually signals, fractions of something, of some attitudes that they think is typical. As I am saying, you criticise the government and the communists criticise the government, so you are a communist. They use this to put you into a particular pigeonhole and dismiss you. It is extremely difficult to fight against this. You remain in this pigeonhole for ever. Which seem to be a fraction of something, some attitude. It is mythical.

I've got this example I do not want to identify myself with fully, but there is this French historian. Her name is Muriel Blaive. She made this mistake. In the 90s or late 80s that she started studying Central Europe in France, about which then she discovered that France does not give a damn. So actually there wasn't a career for her there in this field and then she worked for some years in some kind of East European research institute in Vienna, which was later abolished. And then she became a member of this Czech ÚSTR Institute, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.

I always say and I am not the only one that this is a ridiculously absurd name. Well, you see, if you are an academic, you set out to study something in order to determine that it is something. But this institute knows in advance, before they have even started, that those regimes were totalitarian, right?

So this is very interesting, but anyway. Dr. Blaive has been trying to study every day life under communism here. And she pointed out, and this is what historians do in other East European countries, she has pointed out that actually what happened under the authoritarian Communist government was that people were both victims and collaborators. This is what was the case also in France during the Nazi occupation. This notion that basically people were heroically fighting Nazism in France is absolute rubbish and similarly here under communism.

And you know and again, Mr. Šlerka, would like you like to hear your view about this, but, there is this very strong anticommunist movement here in the Czech Republic. Which is fairly weird. As Dr. Blaive has pointed out, it has been 33 years since the fall of communism and she's saying, well, the Second World War ended in 1945. It would have been absolutely amazing if 33 years after WW II, in 1978, the Czechs were still obsessed with the Gestapo. But many Czechs are still obsessed today with the communism. Maybe it is because obviously the Nazis were definitively defeated in 1945, so they were not a problem in 1978, and the communist party left Parliament only last year. One other important thing is the this. Many people think that there has been the danger that the Communist Party would take over power again. They do not realize that the communists could only take over power in this country because of the influence of the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union does not exist, although now of course we have Putin, another danger.

So anyway, Dr. Blaive has been pointing out that the Czechs collaborated with the regime, they got benefits for it, but of course they were also victims. And she said that it is very important to study everyday life under communism. The anticommunists in the Czech Republic have created this kind of construction that communism was some kind of external affliction. Basically it came from, I don't know, Russia or nowhere and the poor nation had to struggle against it until finally it survived. And she's pointing out, no, you were both victims and perpetrators. As a result, she's being branded a communist.

Comment: But Václav Havel did say that people were part of the system.

Jan Čulík: Yes. It is quite interesting that yes, Havel did write that actually you were always part of the system.

There is no morality in history, says the Czech historian Jan Rychlík, another sensible person. A past consists of a large number of events. But history requires a chronological narrative. Is it possible to create such a chronological narrative without a selection of suitable historical facts? It only depends on us which facts we regard as important. Most modern European nations were formed in the 19th century. This is when these nations constructed their own national narrative. These are basically narratives about how great their national past was.

A majority of citizens in each of these nations then identify themselves with such a narrative. This national narrative is then codified and set in stone by means of the teaching of history in schools. From the point of view of this narrative, the present looks like a logical outcome of the past. But since history does not have an end, the so called contemporary history is gradually also being included into the received national narrative.

However, this creates an insurmountable problem. When you try to construct a historical narrative using events which people have personally experienced and they remember them, this personal experience is often in conflict with the attempts to create a unified national narrative. The conceptual assessment of recent history functions as a justification for the currently ruling power wielders.

In order to create a historical narrative, you have to have an end. A happy outcome.

But reality doesn't have an end.

Let's try to bear that in mind. Thank you very much.

0
Vytisknout
5466

Diskuse

Obsah vydání | 10. 5. 2022